NETFLIX IS SO BIG IT’S FINALLY CANCELING SHOWS

Or, as the original title of this article from “Wired” puts it:

NETFLIX IS SO BIG IT’S FINALLY CANCELING SHOWS. Good.

Here’s why:

by Angela Watercutter

Orange Is the New Black’s sentence is up. Netflix announced this week that the show’s seventh season, hitting the streaming service next year, would be its last. After that, it’s dunzo. For many viewers, this is sad news—the inmates of Litchfield have been a part of the conversation for a long time now. But for everyone else, and for the future of TV broadly, it’s a move that’s long overdue.

For quite some time, it looked as though Netflix, with its seemingly bottomless coffersand try-anything attitude, would never cancel anything. The company habitually renewed shows as soon as they hit the platform; it was only expensive deadweights like The Get Down that ever saw the axe. Recently, though, that’s began to change. The streaming service just pulled the plug on the Marvel show Iron Fist after two seasons, and Everything Sucksafter one—and comedian Michelle Wolf’s talk show The Break after only 10 episodes. Netflix’s laissez-faire approach to programming, it seems, is coming to an end.

But wait!, you say. It’s not likeOrange Is the New Black is getting unceremoniously axed. Seven seasons is a long run! Yes, that’s true; and compared to something like Everything Sucks, OITNB got more than enough time in the sun. But that’s what makes this news even more surprising: It was a popular show, and one of Netflix’s flagship original programs. It’s partially responsible for binge-watching becoming a thing. Coupled with the news that House of Cardswill be ending after the season set to launch next month, the old guard is slowly being phased out. (Yes, HoC is maybe ending for other, Kevin Spacey-related reasons, but if The Conners has taught us anything, popular TV shows can survive problematic stars.) And frankly, Netflix—and its subscribers—are better off….